Moving Forward After January 6th -What We Can Do ? by Bridget Mary

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We live in a time of unprecedented turmoil that challenges us to build relationships of trust, dialogue and action for the well-being of all people and our earth. 

What can we do? 

First, pray for wisdom to truly see others- including those we disagree with- as beloved images of the Holy One.

Second, treat everyone with kindness and respect.  

Third,  support the health and well-being of everyone including the undernourished, ill, homeless -the least and the last on the margins of society everywhere- by generous donations of time and treasure.

Fourth,  collaborate with individuals and groups working for equity and justice including  free and fair elections.

 We can be the change we want to see in our world by doing all we can to promote understanding and love each day. We have the spiritual power to heal and transform our lives and our world.

This is a New Year full of hope and opportunities to do good!

Bridget Mary Meehan

Article by Richard Falk https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/07/january-6-a-year-later/

"The scary relevance of January 6^th a year later is embedded in the hard facts that even such a display of insurrectionary violence did not discourage most of the Republican Party faithful or its voting base from following Trump over the cliff. Indeed, the opposite realities loom larger at the start of 2022 than they did a year earlier. This delusional crusade ‘to save America,’ fed by lies and conspiracy theories are now believed or at least endorsed by tens of millions of Americans. And the endorsement goes so far as to recourse vigilante, and presumably, militia violence to access and operate the levers of power, presumably to be solidified as night follows day by an array of fascist measures to assure that the nuisance of an electorate mandate is never again needed by the new self-anointed guardians of America’s future. The most reliable polls show that 34% of American citizens are currently supportive of such a violent extra-legal challenge, a frighteningly large number that potentially translates into an angry armed mob of over 100,000,000...

In other words, January 6^th not only broke the social contract between state and society but also exposed the ineptitude and decay of two-party democracy. Such exposure should not be limited to the U.S. as parallel descents into political infernos are evident in such varied national contexts as Brazil, India, Myanmar, Philippines, Hungary, Russia. There seems to be a structural flight from humane patterns of governance due almost everywhere, at least partly due to the effects of neoliberal globalization intensifying inequalities and deepens alienation.

What must be evident is that without a surge of revolutionary energies responsive to national, sub-national, regional, and global challenges, the human future is unfolding beneath darkening clouds. Smoothing the rough edges of this American political crisis may buy some needed time to reinvent humane politics in the 21^st century at the onset of this first bio-political-ecological-ethical-spiritual crisis ever to confront the human species, and then the hard work of inventing and deploying a transformative politics begins. "

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.